World AIDs Day has come and gone, but safe sex issues are confronted every day by young people. The Dangers of Common Sense is a play about the dangers of Aids by Asian theatre company Man Mela. Using humour and lots of Bhangra music, it tells the story of four young people and their different attitudes to safe sex, in the process tackling some of the taboos that HIV and Aids raise among different communities. The play, aimed at culturally mixed and Asian young people aged 14 and up, continues its tour of schools, youth clubs and colleges. Details: Caroline Goffin, 0181 692 0231.
Lucky A-level students at Crown Woods School in Eltham. All this week, they have worked with Theatre de Complicite’s Simon McBurney in an exploratory workshop on The Caucasian Chalk Circle with three actors from the company. The intensive, five-hours-a-day workshops introduced the students to a physical language and explored its translation into theatre.
Complicite brings a new adaptation of the play to the National Theatre in April 1997. Information about Complicite’s education work: 0171 700 0233.
A touring theatre production on parenting skills comes to an end next week with a series of fund-raising performances. Let’s Keep Talking, developed by Vital Stages Theatre Company, with Redbridge and Waltham Forest Health Authority and the Area Child Protection Committee, has been touring all secondary schools in Redbridge and Waltham Forest since January 1995.
It highlights parenting concerns, including single-parent families, discipline and media influence, and is intended to be part of a specially developed PSE programme of study, contained in a teachers’ resource pack. Initial funding for the project is coming to an end, but the company would like other London boroughs to use the programme.
Details about the project and performances at the Redbridge Drama Centre on December 12, 13 and 14, ring Michael Woodwood or Keith Homer, 0181 504 5451.
David Wood is Mr Children’s Theatre. Since 1979, his Whirligig Theatre has toured regional and London theatres with everything from The BFG to Noddy. This Christmas season, he has two shows in London. The David Wood Magic and Music Show has a short, sharp stint at the Royal Festival Hall on December 29, 30 and 31. Tickets: 0171 960 4242.
He is also running a revival of his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches at the Vaudeville Theatre from December 9 for a six-week season. Tickets: 0171 836 9987.
A rather more sober affair at Immanuel College, Bushey, Hertfordshire, where the Players present Eli, billed as “a religious mystery play” from December 16 to 18. Written by Nobel prize-winning poet Nelly Sachs in 1940, it is set in a Jewish village in Eastern Europe and tells the story of a murdered child and the quest for his killer. Details: 0181 950 0604.
While Beauty and the Beast plays in the main house at the Young Vic, Pop Up Theatre is presenting What About Me? in the Studio for under-fives. It’s a musical play about feeling left out. Tickets: 0171 275 8376.
